O’Farrell seems to be the one street that draws the line. From there it is all downhill. Pigeons peck on orange cheetos shaken out of a bag by a man on the sidewalk. People loiter about and a queue on Turk Street snakes out of a community center serving meals. The area smells of urine. Someone’s belongings are piled high in a Safeway shopping cart.
This is where poverty meets art, where poets live in tiny compartments of residential hotels and scribble their thoughts on their beds. It is where the most evocative verse are written. But it is also doom. Most of these works will not see the light of day and likely to be lost in the turbulence of life.
Uptown glamour is only one street away, but the line is hard to cross.
Photo by Thor Swift/NYT
